Manufacturers lose an enormous amount of revenue due to the unauthorized duplication and sale of products. Consumers also suffer from the consequences of such counterfeiting. In some cases, for instance, consumers pay substantially full price for counterfeit products which they believe to be genuine, only to later find out that the products are not authentic. Moreover, the counterfeit products may prove to be substandard or completely inoperative. Many consumers would not purchase such products if they knew, at the outset, that they were not genuine.
Optical discs are often the target of counterfeiting. Optical disks include DVD-type discs, CD-type disks, Blu-Ray discs, and so on. In a typical counterfeiting operation, a counterfeiter obtains an authorized or unauthorized version of digital content, e.g., from an authorized or unauthorized version of a disc which stores that content. The counterfeiter then duplicates the content of that disc on a potentially large number of counterfeit discs. Such content may include movies, software, games, or any other type of digital content.
Understandably, the industry remains highly motivated to reduce the counterfeiting of optical discs and other products. In one approach, a manufacturer of a product can add a unique ID to the product. However, such an approach is not always effective. Despite preventative efforts, a counterfeiter can potentially discover the ID and subsequently duplicate it on the counterfeit products.
In general, known anti-counterfeiting techniques may help reduce the unauthorized duplication of products. But there remain unmet challenges in such efforts, and thus ample room for improvement.